Assessing

The Economics unit that I have planned has many opportunities for formative assessments. At the very outset of the lesson, I will be able to see how the students use the Promethean board to answer the questions from a website based on the poem 
“Simple Simon was a Pieman” and how they sort the pictures into the correct resource category. The Promethean board allows me to save after the students sort the pictures, so that I can analyze the flipchart later. I found these sites in my curriculum pacing guide as a suggested resource. The questions and picture examples are aligned with Social Studies SOL 2.7. During the middle part of the unit, the students will complete a graphic organizer that demonstrates what they learned from a series of short economic videos. I developed this graphic organizer using the word processing program Pages. I wanted a way to see if the students were able to recognize human, capital, and natural resources from the videos and to remediate students who are not seeming to grasp the concepts. This will be used to assess student knowledge of the concepts taught up to this point. During the lesson wrap up, I will have the students self-assess by using a graph on the Promethean Interactive Whiteboard. The graph is divided into three categories. The categories will be labeled, I really get this, I’m on my way, and I need a little more time. The students will drag an icon to the category that represents how they feel about the information taught. This information can be saved and used to inform teaching and decide what to re-teach if necessary.
As far as summative assessments are concerned, I plan to use a rubric from Rubistar to assess the students’ final projects. I developed this rubric using the essential knowledge columns of the second and third grade curriculum frameworks from the Virginia Department of Education. Using the curriculum frameworks to guide my assessment will allow me to assess who is ready to take the economics portion the the Social Studies Standards of Learning test and who needs more guided practice. The students will also take a final unit test that is aligned by the Hampton’s social studies department from the Virginia Standards of Learning.